“More than just food”
Exploring and problematising the notion of blind consumption and blind refusal to consume in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Nervous Conditions” in the EFL classroom
Independent project, 15 credits
Author: Tz-Yu Chang Supervisor: Anne Holm Examiner: Anna Thyberg Term: Autumn 2019
Abstract
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions problematises the notion of consumption by making connections between ideologies and values and physical food substances, and places them within greater systems of gender and cultural oppression in a postcolonial context. By examining the ways in which unquestioning or blind, or complete refusal of, consumption affects different aspects of health in the novel, students in the EFL classroom are given a chance to develop and apply critical thinking skills to achieve an awareness for the importance of balance when maintaining healthy relationships not only to ideologies and values, but to food and mental well-being as well.
Key words
Nervous Conditions, consumption, postcolonial, upper secondary school, critical thinking skills, eating disorders, ideologies and values, EFL classroom
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ... 1
2 The Postcolonial Context and the Classroom Setting ... 3
2.1 Readings and Interpretations ... 3
2.2 Postcolonial Literature in Swedish Upper Secondary Schools ... 4
2.3 English in the EFL Classroom ... 6
2.4 The Colonial “Other” ... 7
2.5 The Gendered “Other” ... 9
3 Exploring the Notion of Consumption ... 10
3.1 Contact with Colonial Education: Consuming Values and Expectations .... 11
3.2 Relationship to Food: Problematising Consumption ... 17
4 Conclusion ... 24
Works Cited ... 27
1 Introduction
A bold statement makes up the opening line of Nervous Conditions, a 1988 postcolonial novel written by Tsitsi Dangarembga: “I was not sorry when my brother died” (1). What follows is the surrounding context told in a story format, the need for understanding and investigating the background to statements and later, experiences, embedded from the very first sentence. Nervous Conditions was first published three years after it was written as Dangarembga experienced problems with getting her novel published because she was a female author and male critics had deemed the novel’s depiction of black women’s lives unfair (Lessing 423). Set between the 1960s and 1970s in then-Rhodesia, Nervous Conditions follows the friendship between cousins and dual protagonists Tambudzai, Tambu for short, and Nyasha.
They experience and react to the juxtaposition of their culture and background against postcolonial Western ideals in different ways. Tambu struggles to negotiate an acceptable identity as she accepts education provided by her uncle Babamukuru after her brother Nhamo’s death. Meanwhile, Nyasha experiences a mental and physical breakdown and eventually develops anorexia and bulimia after returning to Zimbabwe after a stint in England with brother Chido and their parents. Their struggles are part of a complex situation caused by the two-fold oppression experienced by the women in the novel. The first is gendered; women are oppressed by both the indigenous and colonial patriarchal society in which they live. The second is racial;
women are oppressed even further by a lowered status imposed by colonialism.
The gendered crisis in Nervous Conditions offers a discussion point of one of the fundamental values laid out at the beginning of the “Curriculum for the upper secondary school” to “actively and consciously further equal rights and opportunities for women and men . . . [and] develop their interests without prejudice to gender differences” (5). Furthermore, Nyasha’s condition offers an opportunity for students to discuss physical and mental health issues and what “knowledge about the preconditions for good health” (“Curriculum” 8) entails.
This postcolonial novel also allows students to delve into deeper literary and cultural analyses and cover key points of health and combating gender stereotypes within the Swedish curriculum’s value-system. The setting and context of the novel will help students to better understand the living conditions and social issues in English speaking countries, and hopefully encourage their linguistic and cultural curiosity (“English” 1). They are also able to practise and analyse ways in which to adapt “their language to different situations, purposes and recipients” (“English” 1). Furthermore, the partly autobiographical nature of Nervous Conditions provides a chance to explore and discuss literary conventions and genres, a required
area within the syllabus for English 5, 6 and 7 (“English” 3, 7, 11).
The novel explores the concept of consumption in relation to ideologies and consuming food (Creamer 351). In a similar fashion, the novel draws parallels between the physical consumption of food to keep one’s body healthy to the figurative consumption of ideologies as nourishment for the mind and soul. The characters’ bodies become sites where the owners are force-fed literal nutritional substances as well as figurative food in terms of colonial education and history, ideologies such as sexual and beauty ideals. The various nervous conditions, a loaded term that will be explored further, that arise from problematic consumption illustrate the oppressive systems that encourage ignorance and hinder critical analysis. However, the existing critical reflection on what and how the body and mind consume ideologies and food leads to other kinds of nervous conditions. The systems of colonial and patriarchal oppression that the women in the novel are subjected to create, perpetuate and worsen the nervous conditions they suffer. This forms the postcolonial context of the novel and serves as a theoretical framework that illustrates various mechanisms and instruments of cultural and gender stereotypes and how they function within colonialism.
However, postcolonial literature is an area that teachers seem reluctant to explore and that reluctance extends to the implementation of longer reading projects as indicated by student
works by Filip Svensson and Karl-Oscar Westerberg Ågren. There also seems to be a general sense of nervousness students experience when they are asked to speak English in the classroom that may pose a major obstacle for their personal linguistic development. As with any literary work, postcolonial texts can in fact be used to develop and hone verbal linguistic skills as well as interpretation and critical analysis. This is further situated in a more general, dynamic cultural context where language is linked to power, autonomy and identity (Gorle 192). While specific experiences in Nervous Conditions may be foreign to Swedish students due to cultural differences, the novel may help students to critically reflect on the idea of consumption and how unquestioning or blind consumption can be just as detrimental as blind refusal to consume at all.
2 The Postcolonial Context and the Classroom Setting
2.1 Readings and Interpretations
Nervous Conditions has been read from a number of different perspectives but analyses
have concentrated on the nervous conditions themselves within a postcolonial context. There is much focus on Nyasha’s anorexia both in its cultural context and from feministic perspectives due to the physical and mental severity of her breakdown. Her body becomes “a weapon of power in an otherwise powerless situation,” writes Janice E. Hill in her article
“Purging a Plate Full of Colonial History: The ‘Nervous Conditions’ of Silent Girls” (82). The body is not only a site of rebellion and battle for power over identity but also sexual autonomy.
Nyasha’s refusal to eat has been connected to the desire to conform to Western beauty standards, while simultaneously refusing to be regarded as a fertile, marriageable commodity by traditional Shona conventions (Bahri par. 21). The corporeal body is used to illustrate and problematise consumption in terms of metaphorical ideologies and standards of beauty as well as literal starvation and purging in the case of Nyasha’s eating disorders, as elaborated on by
Eustace Palmer, Sue Thomas and Heidi Creamer in their respective analyses. That Nyasha suffers from anorexia nervosa at all - an affliction traditionally regarded to affect predominantly white middle class women - can be seen as an attempt by Dangarembga to highlight the similarities and differences in women’s individualised experiences under oppression.
Others, such as Gilian Gorle and Pauline Ada Uwakweh, respectively, read the novel from different feminist perspectives, drawing parallels between language, speaking and power to colonialism and patriarchy. Gorle, for instance, takes Dangarembga’s novel to show that language brings with it “dangers of cultural alienation” but could also “contain the seeds of freedom for some women” (192). Uwakweh agrees in that in contrast to Nyasha, whose failure to assimilate into either cultural (Western or Shona) community results in her eating disorder,
“redemption apparently lies in Tambu’s growing awareness and attainment of voice” (82).
Tambu therefore serves as a hopeful and optimistic figure to Nyasha’s sharp but pessimistic experience of gendered and cultural oppression. All these themes and topics contribute to the
“nervous conditions” described and exhibited by, as well as analysed in the novel through its characters and the problematic relationship to the notion of consumption.
2.2 Postcolonial Literature in Swedish Upper Secondary Schools
Terms such as colonialism, postcolonialism and decolonisation discussed within higher academic and political realms are not easy to understand or distinguish for the average Swedish upper secondary school student, much less one who has little interest in English literature.
Reading the novel serves as a way to make such intangible aspects easier to grasp and explore these aspects through different perspectives (Eck 578). Postcolonialism and decolonisation are concepts central to the ways in which Nervous Conditions can be read and are therefore useful as structural frameworks for students to analyse and work with. This framework can then be
used to navigate through and around the various themes presented in the novel while simultaneously contextualising the themes and topics in a tangible way.
In general, many teachers seem to shy away from utilising postcolonial literature due to a belief “that postcolonial literature in some way is more difficult than other literature”
(Svensson 29) in content (themes and motifs) as well as linguistically. However, as Ulrika Tornberg states, postcolonial literature in the English classroom can successfully be used to develop language skills and deeper analysis and interpretation skills (275). Many postcolonial texts are of a higher linguistic difficulty and explore complex themes. As mentioned, working with shorter excerpts could be a solution. Additionally, using postcolonial literature to explore wider cultural differences in values, perceptions and traditions instead of focusing on details could also be of more interest to students. For example, an extract from Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy can be used to explore Nigerian Pidgin English and place its linguistic status within
its cultural context in a real-world setting. It is an engaging way for students to learn about different kinds of English, their connections to historical colonialism and the link between language, power and identity.
However, postcolonial literature and novels such as Nervous Conditions and Sozaboy cannot be relegated to being purely utilitarian tools whereby specific goals and intentions are set for students. There is merit in reading texts for their own sakes, exploring different kinds and lengths of literature, on varying topics and perspectives in order to deepen understanding of both the language and the cultural values and principles within the literature itself. However, reading is not always considered fun or pleasureable for students. Therefore, encouraging them to read for pleasure should occur in combination with structuring reading with reports and discussion groups (Harmer 321). In fact, the syllabus omits what level of contact with a broad range of different literary texts students should engage with. This provides a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to studying texts, whether it be to focus on detailed analyses or engage
in wider discussions about aspects such as gender, race, culture and social relationships on an international and relevant level. Such topics are rather abstract and can be difficult for students to understand, much less in another language. However, the framework that postcolonial theories provides can make abstract ideas tangible through themes such as problematising consumption in Nervous Conditions. It also helps students to develop “the ability to critically examine and assess what they see, hear and read in order to be able to discuss and take a view on different issues concerning life and values” (“Curriculum” 9), and deepen associated linguistic knowledge and application in the EFL classroom.
2.3 English in the EFL Classroom
For many students, English is a third, fourth or even fifth language; which means that as a second or other language, acquisition is different from mother tongue language in that it requires teaching. The teacher is responsible for selection, implementation and practice in almost all areas: material, working methods, assignment and activity types and difficulty levels, degree of student influence, test content and methods (excluding to a certain extent the Swedish National Tests) and the “what” and “how” of feedback given to continue the students’
development. Combined, these factors can bring about a reluctance or disinterest in the formal learning, or in other words the structured consumption, of English in the classroom.
Students at upper secondary school are at an adolescent age where emotions can override reasoning and so require shorter activities that are relevant to channel their emotional passions into (Harmer 83-4). They have varied kinds and levels of linguistic contact, both in their mother tongues, English and subsequent languages. Implementing longer reading projects such as reading Nervous Conditions or alternatively, studying shorter extracts could encourage students to “critically examine and assess statements and relationships” (“Curriculum” 8) at a slower and more critical pace to see how “language is used as an instrument to exercise power”
(“English” 11). This extends not only to the postcolonial context of the characters’ experiences, but to the students’ reflections on their own relationships to the idea of consumption, especially with regards to modern advertising and social media. These two factors have a dominant presence that may increase risks for eating disorders (Polivy and Herman 191-204). In examining the characters’ consumption of colonial and gender ideologies, students are encouraged to critically reflect on their own consumption of modern technology and ideals such as beauty standards, and how that impacts their physical and mental well-being.
2.4 The Colonial “Other”
The framework through which the novel will be examine is postcolonial and gendered.
The title comes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, where he states that “the status of [the] ‘native’ is a nervous condition” (19). This nervous condition stems from the colonial oppression that the “native” is forced to endure. Fanon goes on to write in The Wretched of the Earth that “colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: ‘In reality, who am I?’” (249), a reference quote in Nervous Conditions. Defining one’s identity is arguably always relational and politically,
socially and culturally situated in specific historical contexts. However, if identity is relational, then the “self” needs an “other” for the purpose of definition and comparison (Sartre 222). In the postcolonial context of the novel, Edward Said’s definitions of the self and other extend to the juxtaposition of colonised and colonisers. For Said, “the Other” is the voiceless colonised while “the Self” represents the colonisers, where “the main thing for the European visitor was a European representation of the Orient” (1). Furthermore, a crucial aspect of identity is its acknowledgement and articulation. The colonised were not only subjected to a violent overwriting of their sense of self and objectified in that way, “native languages and culture
were discouraged” (Aberbach 226). This meant that they were denied their cultural heritage and by extension, a cultural identity.
Colonialism then packaged this “violent breaking away from family and culture . . . via assimilation in a White Christian educational system” (Aberbach 221). Thus, oppressive values were embedded within the educational system and many colonised were not always aware of the deceptive ways that colonial education instilled an inherent hatred for their own backgrounds and cultures, while simultaneously setting them up for failure to assimilate completely into the coloniser’s culture. In other words, colonial education fed the colonised an indoctrination that made their native culture seem unpalatable or lesser in comparison. This is evidenced in the novel where Tambu describes a change in her brother Nhamo after his missionary schooling: “all the poverty began to offend him . . . in a way that it had not done before” (Dangarembga 7) and that “he had forgotten how to speak Shona” (Dangarembga 53).
One of the ironies in the novel is that Tambu fails to recognise a similar change in her own attitude until her mother exclaims: “You think I am dirt now, me, your mother” (Dangarembga 143). This change happens subtly as a result of her unquestioning consumption of colonial education and values.
While this experience may be alien to many Swedish students, those who have immigrant backgrounds may identify with the linguistic and cultural struggles of adjusting to life in Sweden and the Swedish school system. Many of these students often speak another language at home in addition to both Swedish and English. For some of these multicultural students, bilingualism (mother tongue and Swedish) is not uncommon, but for others, Swedish is not a native language and has to be learnt in conjunction with other school subjects as well as Eurocentric languages. Knowledge and usage of a language must be placed within its cultural contexts where its relationships to identity, power and autonomy are elucidated. In Nervous Conditions, the women’s struggles for autonomy and identity are informed and
situated within a cultural and historical context. By exploring these contexts, the novel provides contextual cultural knowledge which “allows pupils to understand people with separate culture, identity and ideology better” (Westerberg Ågren 40). At the same time, ensuring that the novel is placed within its postcolonial context serves as a reminder that the story and characters are representations of cultural experiences and ideologies and not genuine reflections on reality.
This enables students to apply critical thinking skills not just to the content of the novel, but the extent to which the novel conforms to or breaks literary conventions, and what kind of impact that such a novel has as a fictional work with semi-autobiographical elements.
2.5 The Gendered “Other”
By quoting Fanon, Dangarembga highlights the lack of gendered colonial experiences within The Wretched of the Earth. The novel then goes on to present different accounts of oppression on this omitted gendered level. While the Said’s definition of colonised “Other”
applies to the novel’s characters, Tambu, Nyasha and the rest of the women are seen as inferior due to their race as well as their gender. They are expected to be compliant, obedient and unquestioningly grateful under their indigenous patriarchal culture. Not only are their voices and autonomies taken away by colonialism because of their race, they are also silenced by both black and white men. Therefore, the black women in the novel are not only “Other” in the colonial sense, they are also “Other” because they are women. As Simone de Beauvoir posits,
“humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered an autonomous being” (26). Thus, these black women are voiceless and “Other”ed twice over and have to suffer the consequences in silence.
Nervous Conditions emphasises individualised experiences and, in this way, serves to bridge the gap between relevance and interest within the English classroom. Students’
experiences and personal developments are unique and move at different paces. Although
direct parallels cannot be drawn to the characters’ and students’ experiences, the characters within the novel demonstrate different interpretations and reactions to various forms of oppression. The characters’ experiences also illustrate the different ways that oppression functions in the novel and its consequences, as well as how the oppressed can regain autonomy within the context of postcolonialism. Through reading the novel, students can develop and practise critical analysis and interpretation skills that combat stereotypes and homogenous groupings of race, gender and culture. It also provides a platform for them to gain and practise an awareness of the different ways that language is connected to power, oppression and autonomy; as well as critically reflect on the concept and consequences of blind consumption and refusing to blindly consume.
3 Exploring the Notion of Consumption
The characters in the novel develop nervous conditions due to various problematic attitudes towards the notion of consumption. While the novel portrays many different problems with consumption, the two main categories are the figurative, such as ideologies and expectations, and the physical - literal food. On an ideological level, many of Nervous Conditions’ characters suffer in some way or another after contact with colonial education since
they are perceived to be inferior as students, where teachers and the academic system have authority over them, and as colonised. Thus, they are expected to partly passively consume and internalise both overt and subtle forms of knowledge and values. This type of consumption becomes the source of their nervous conditions despite their awareness and knowledge about its destructive consequences. On a physical level, Dangarembga shows how the characters’
relationships to food are problematic and serve to create or worsen their nervous conditions.
The idea of blind consumption and its opposite, blind refusal to consume, is therefore shown
to be problematic and warranting critical reflection in the novel through contact with colonial education and relationship to food.
3.1 Contact with Colonial Education: Consuming Values and Expectations
Colonial education granted not only linguistic access to a mainstream discourse, it also provided insight into cultural and gendered values and expectations embedded within colonialism. All the female characters in the novel develop some manifestation of nervous conditions after coming into contact with Western education where their identities or autonomies are called into question. In contrast, the men suffer less but also find themselves on unstable ground by the end due to the growing dissent with colonialism that, although not explicitly mentioned, contextually frames the novel.
Protagonist Tambu is firmly grounded in her Shona identity until her brother Nhamo’s death grants her access to Western education. Her attitude towards her life on the rural homestead begins as one filled with wonder, joy and pride (Dangarembga 4). There is no hatred or displeasure for her position and she even chides Nhamo for having developed disdain for his life back home (Dangarembga 7). The difference between the siblings is that Nhamo has no qualms about adopting Western values, nor does he have a reason to. Nhamo’s position is similar to that of Nyasha’s brother Chido and father Babamukuru. They are afforded that position because they are males, and that position is further cemented into authority and entitlement because they occupy the roles of African males who have obediently consumed and benefited from colonial education. As head of the family, Babamukuru has received colonial education and is highly appreciative of it, aware of and comfortable with the fact that the “freedom that education and association with the white people will bring is not for women”
(Palmer 178). This is because colonial education upholds traditional patriarchy (Bahri par. 12) and reinforces the double standard that the women in the novel are forced to endure. Women
are confined to marriage and motherhood because “their lot, educational status notwithstanding, is defined by service to and for men” (Bahri par. 12). Characters Mainini, Tambu’s mother, and Maiguru follow this double standard and are mostly subservient to their husbands.
However, Babamukuru is not without any nervous conditions of his own. In fact, his family “hardly ever laughed when Babamukuru was in earshot, because, Maiguru said, his nerves were bad” (Dangarembga 104). These bad nerves stem from the problematic position that he occupies where he has to balance and negotiate “two systems of economic, political and family regulation - the English and the Shona” (Thomas 29). As the most educated and wealthiest in his Shona family, Babamukuru is expected to help impoverished family members.
He fulfils this expectation with diligence, ensuring that Nhamo, and later Tambu, receives colonial education. However, he does so in order to bolster his own image as an educated, and thus wealthy, and benevolent Shona patriarch. Babamukuru chooses the elements from Shona tradition that reinforce and feed his ferocious desire to emulate and be the paternalistic white man (Palmer 183). This is further reflected in his house that is painted white, guarded by dogs which include an albino where no dirt is allowed at all. His rule is so unflinchingly authoritarian and stern to the point where he fails to empathise or sympathise with the plights and nervous conditions afflicting the other characters. This disconnect from his family and alienation from other Shona traditions, together with picking and choosing elements that best fit his rigid ideals creates and worsens Babamukuru’s nervous condition. His “bad nerves” have made him a perpetrator and victim of the cultural dissonance brought about by his attempt to “make European culture his own” (Fanon 218). In other words, his “picky eating” habits instilled or exacerbated by colonial education (an unbalanced diet) directly results in his “bad nerves” or mental ill-being.
By comparison, his wife Maiguru is just as educated but because she is a woman, none of her achievements are celebrated or even acknowledged. Maiguru tells Tambu: “What it is . . . to have to choose between self and security. When I was in England I glimpsed for a little while the things I could have been, the things I could have done . . . no one even thinks about the things I gave up . . . But that’s how it goes . . . When you have a good man and lovely children, it makes it all worth while” (Dangarembga 103). This conscious choice between “self and security” came at the price of being Babamukuru’s obedient, subservient wife who will never be seen as an equal partner in her marriage. The two terms “self” and “security” are mutually exclusive for Maiguru, where the choice of “security” over “self” meant that the “self” is consumed and replaced by “security.” This dichotomy reinforces the narrow gender roles set for women by both colonialism and patriarchy. There is no space to be secure in one’s self, it is simply not a possibility. Character Maiguru’s autonomy is therefore confined to cultural and gendered expectations that frame her subsequent rebellion.
This happens when Babamukuru yet again chooses to reaffirm his image as a benevolent traditional patriarch by taking Maiguru’s savings to fund Tambu’s parents’
wedding. Unhappy and dissatisfied with being treated as an invisible servant with no say, Maiguru stands up to her husband and leaves the home for five days. Although this small act of rebellion initially shocks her family, she soon returns after staying with her brother. When Nyasha laments that her mother ran to “A man! She always runs to men” (Dangarembga 177), she fails to consider that despite Maiguru’s education, her mother has invested too much in the marriage and family to permanently leave (Palmer 190). Not only that, while Nyasha understands that her mother is “trying to escape from something broader than just Babamukuru . . . she cannot even imagine what escape could look like” (Creamer 355). For Maiguru, her contact with colonial education does not grant her status, autonomy (Uwakweh 81) or a real voice even when she finds it for a brief moment. However, this brief moment is
enough to ease her nervous condition as she returns to the family home with more self- confidence and an improved self-image (Palmer 190). Maiguru’s personal experiences inform and frame her rebellion, refusing uncritical or blind consumption and unquestioning fulfilment of her husband’s expectations.
These traditional heterosexual roles set by marriage are not unfamiliar to Swedish upper secondary school students even though their own family constructs may not follow the same patterns. Babamukuru appropriating Maiguru’s funds and the problematic nature of her unquestioning subservience that leads to her nervous condition presents a starting point in the classroom to further explore gender roles and expectations within romantic relationships.
Students can bring in their own interpretations and background histories through making connections to what these roles entail for them in theory and practice. By relating classroom material to their own lives, discussions become more relevant and relevance increases the chances for genuine engagement (Harmer 84). There is a risk that some students find gender equality overdone or boring to discuss in the classroom setting. There is also the risk that some students create stereotypes and dismiss Babamukuru and Maiguru’s partnership model as a consequence or hallmark of a foreign culture. However, these risks can be minimised by ensuring that themes within the novel are contextualised culturally and historically within postcolonialism. Furthermore, relevance to modern society and parallels relatable to students’
lives can be drawn in a timeline fashion by examining and comparing “contemporary and older literature” (“English” 7) such as Nervous Conditions, as well as through cultural discussions.
These methods invite students to reflect on any changes to traditional gender roles, how and where they exist and function, how they enforce gendered and cultural stereotypes or contribute towards gender equality. Furthermore, discussing terms such as heteronormativity, femininity and masculinity may serve to “counteract restrictions on choices that are based on stereotyped
views concerning gender and social or cultural background” (“Curriculum” 12) in the students’
own educational paths.
Lisa Eck, in her essay “Thinking Globally, Teaching Locally: The ‘Nervous Conditions’ of Cross-Cultural Literacy,” outlines three different perspectives that can be achieved through studying the novel. The first is that of identification, where students are invited to explore how “hybrid postcolonial identities seem familiar” on a wider level (578).
Then Professor Eck uses “the Otherness of cultures reproduced in foreign texts to estrange the ... familiar” to situate reading and analysis of the novel within its sociocultural and historical contexts (578). Even though Eck’s essay draws on teaching experiences from an American university course in world literature, this inverted juxtaposition of “estranging the . . . familiar”
may work equally well in the Swedish upper secondary school classroom (578). This can be done through viewing familiar or already known Swedish cultural and social norms and conventions from a foreign perspective. Students are invited to imagine themselves as foreigners and critically reflect on how their own cultural norms and conventions look to, for instance, a postcolonial audience. Doing so not only encourages the development of critical thinking, it can combat stereotyping and homogenous groupings of cultural differences through this kind of contextualisation, as well as develop students’ abilities to “empathise with and understand the situation of other people” (“Curriculum” 10). Finally, the third perspective is a deeper reflection on the nuances of identification and the need for balance (Eck 580). This need is an integral part of “strategies for source-critical approaches when listening to and reading communications from different sources and in different media” (“English” 7). This can be further achieved by examining the relationship between Tambu and Nyasha and their nervous conditions after contact with colonial education.
This voicelessness and sense of helplessness is a running theme in the novel but is not indicative of a hopeless situation. Instead, its narration is filtered and served through Tambu’s
memory as she tells “my own story, the story of four women who I loved, and our men”
(Dangarembga 208). This narration style places the emphasis on female struggles and highlights cultural differences and individual experiences. While the statement that “the victimization of women [Tambu] sees does not depend on class or culture, but it is universal”
(Corneliussen 45) holds true, the idea of a homogenous “female” or “colonised oppression”
erases the differences between and uniqueness of experiences and reactions by individuals. The oppression is universal for women and comes in many different forms, sexual, educational, mother roles and consequences of disobedience, but it is not uniform. This is shown in the novel through the different nervous conditions and various problematic relationships to food and consumption that each female character develops.
Narrator Tambu’s change in attitude after going to missionary school is subtle and stands in contrast to Nyasha’s fraught and tenuous attitude to life in the novel. Tambu understands the possibilities that education brings, even if it came at the unrelated cost of her brother’s death that enabled her to take his place. She is also well aware of her status as “an object of charity,” used in part as one of Babamukuru’s pawns to elevate his own status and image and thus tries to appease him as best she can (Palmer 191). This happens to be in the form of a model daughter that Nyasha fails to fulfil but that Babamukuru always wanted (Dangarembga 157). In that sense, Tambu consumes and digests Babamukuru’s expectations by dutifully accepting and conforming to them. Before moving to her uncle’s house, she had shown remarkable resilience and initiative in paying for her own tuition by planting maize. She was happy and satisfied eating vegetables on the homestead and was “genuinely responsive to the beauties of the traditional” (Palmer 179). However, education became inextricably entwined with food for Tambu where in order to be well fed, one had to be educated (Creamer 354). This connection is not inherently wrong or harmful but does become misguided since she
fails to critically reflect on how this change in consumption, which has become unquestioning or blind consumption, could affect her both mentally and physically.
3.2 Relationship to Food: Problematising Consumption
After meeting the novel’s other protagonist Nyasha, Tambu realises that the constant rebellion her cousin embarks on is not only mentally and physically draining, it erodes her sense of identity and diminishes her autonomy over both her identity and her body. It literally eats at Nyasha until she is a husk of her former self, leading to her eventually developing anorexia and bulimia. Nyasha communicates her discontent with her circumstances through her body. Tambu later discovers that Nyasha has few friends at school as the other students dislike her because they claim “she thinks she is white” (Dangarembga 95). Contact with colonial education leaves Nyasha alienated because she will never be able to assimilate into Western culture. Yet it also enables her to see how traditional and colonial hierarchies work in tandem to create “an alliance of colonial and indigenous patriarchy” (Gunner 144) that combine to become “they” who have “deprived you of you, him of him, ourselves of each other”
(Dangarembga 205). Dangarembga shows how Nyasha is caught between two different cultures that expect her to conform while simultaneously denying her the chance to fully or successfully assimilate (Aberbach 223). There is no solution for Nyasha’s identity struggles because there is no space that she can comfortably occupy, much like her mother’s struggle to be secure in her self. Nyasha is stuck in cultural and identity limbo, with little access to any helpful support system or network: “I’m not one of them but I’m not one of you” (Dangarembga 205). Her insight into and critical reflection about the systems of oppression are of little assistance to Nyasha since they grant her no power or autonomy. These systems have consumed her identity and autonomy while she simultaneously refuses to consume the ideologies and
values they offer. Therefore, the only semblance of autonomy that Nyasha feels she can exert in the novel is on her own body and control her relationship to food by refusing to eat.
The characters’ relationships to food are intertwined with education and identity where education functions as a sort of food, and identity formation includes the consumption and digestion of education. Tambu’s mother describes the way in which Tambu listens to Maiguru
“as though you want to eat the words that come out of her mouth. But me, I’m not educated, am I? I’m just poor and ignorant, so you want me to keep quiet” (Dangarembga 142). Tambu graduates from eating vegetables to meat at Babamukuru’s house, deeming education as a means to eat better. Nyasha on the other hand views food as the only vestige of control and autonomy that she has left. The novel’s mealtimes become therefore a battle in itself, a display and fight for power and autonomy that worsen the nervous conditions suffered by the characters. Babamukuru maintains iron rule over his family, a force-feeding of sorts where he bluntly tells Nyasha “I expect you to do as I say. Now sit down and eat your food”
(Dangarembga 85). Her mother is of no help either, snapping at Nyasha when she says she is not hungry “When did you ever go to bed hungry? Not in this house!” (Dangarembga 84) This leaves Nyasha with minimal agency over this vital source of sustenance and nourishment.
Therefore, she chooses to take a stand and tries to wrest the little control that she can by refusing to consume food.
Nyasha’s refusal to eat, “a time honored and cross-cultural form of protest” (Bahri par.
20), is an action that every female character undertakes at some point or another in the novel.
Their refusal to eat is a way to communicate dissatisfaction in a non-verbal fashion. Tambu’s mother Mainini, for instance, refuses to eat when Tambu decides to attend school (Dangarembga 187). Tellingly, the food that one eats, or refuses to eat, has meaning both on a physical nourishment level but also figuratively in terms of ideologies and values. Tambu is unfamiliar with the food when she first arrives to stay at her uncle’s house. She is physically
unable to eat the meat and gravy plated by Maiguru, partly due to her inexperience with using a knife and fork and partly because of the taste. Noticing this, Maiguru then asks for sadza, a traditional maize porridge, to be brought to Tambu along with a spoon. Later on, Tambu becomes accustomed to eating meat to the point where life with her mother seems poor and paltry in comparison. This comparison is only revealed to her after coming into contact with colonial education and a different culinary lifestyle. In this way, colonial education becomes a
“weapon of discrimination” and alienation (Palmer 198). The education Tambu receives as a Zimbabwean girl is different to that of the white colonisers and when she does receive the same education, the consequence is alienation where traditional identities and values are replaced or consumed by colonial values, as in the case of Nyasha.
The underlying causes of anorexia and bulimia vary from sociocultural factors, the media, familial influences, and individual risk factors (Polivy and Herman 191-204).
Knowledge about health and eating disorders is not only an integral part of the curriculum (6), it is also a vital element in the novel. Nyasha’s inability to stomach food can be read as an analogy of her refusal to swallow or accept an identity that she herself has had no conscious hand in helping to create or shape in any way. She rejects Western ideologies, tearing a history book up with her teeth in an outburst: “Their history. Fucking liars. Their bloody lies”
(Dangarembga 205). Others like Mainini see her as already succumbing to them: “It’s the Englishness . . . It’ll kill them all if they aren’t careful” (Dangarembga 207). In addition, Nyasha’s illnesses are dismissed by a psychiatrist who claims that “Africans did not suffer in the way we had described” (Dangarembga 206). On a racial or cultural level, Nyasha’s nervous conditions stem from being oppressed by colonialism and being denied a place in any culture because of her hybrid status. Patriarchy and sexual autonomy play important roles as well, seeing as Nyasha’s refusal to eat halts her body’s growth. By doing so, she refuses to become a suitable bride by traditional Shona standards, attempting to take back sexual autonomy by
denying her father the chance to marry her off as a commodity. Her bulimia – her purging of food – can therefore also be read as a refusal to “swallow a sexist ideology she cannot and will not stomach” (Aegerter 237). She refuses to be seen as a compliant extension of her father and tries in vain to regain power over her own body and identity. Her consumption and refusal to consume food and ideologies demonstrates the destructive ways in which colonial education and an unhealthy relationship to food are linked to language and autonomy.
The way in which Nyasha communicates through starvation and purging is shown to be harmful and stems in part from conflicting beauty standards from two different cultures in the novel. There is therefore a need to examine not only the existence and definition of beauty standards, but its perpetuation and mechanisms as well. Nyasha’s experiences provide therefore a chance to deepen students’ knowledge about how language can be subtly yet calculatingly used to “express influence in such areas as political debate and advertising” (“English” 7) in a postcolonial context. The technology dominant classroom of the twenty-first century consists of students who are constantly exposed to a flood of information and misinformation through social media and advertising about issues such as body ideals and beauty standards. In this way, examining beauty standards becomes a bridge between the postcolonial context and modern life, helping students to “develop language awareness” (“English” 1) by discussing and reflecting on “living conditions, social issues and cultural features in different contexts and parts of the world where English is used” (“English” 2).
Swedish upper secondary school students receive information on health and eating disorders in various forms, from school-wide theme days to subject specific topics. Discussions of postcolonial literature such as Nervous Conditions serve to contextualise certain mental and physical disorders through its themes and character experiences. Since the topic of eating disorders may be sensitive to some students, classroom discussions require careful construction and mindful implementation. The need to conform to beauty standards coupled with personality
traits that lead to a higher risk for developing an eating disorder are potent and relevant factors for upper secondary school students. Since girls are at a higher risk for developing anorexia and bulimia, a gendered perspective is unavoidable but vital when discussing eating disorders.
Here, double standards of beauty can be tied into relationship roles sexually and in terms of consumer culture (“Curriculum” 14). Nyasha’s conditions thus provide a way to discuss issues regarding gender stereotypes and misconceptions that exacerbate vulnerabilities and destructive behaviours. Thus, students are encouraged to explore and critically evaluate their consumption of advertising and marketing in areas such as beauty standards and health issues through gendered and cultural perspectives.
So far, the novel is shown to tackle certain abstract ideologies of consumption through colonial values via education, gendered roles within relationships, advertising and beauty standards, as well as physical food substances and problematic relationships to food.
Consumption becomes a topic that enables concrete events to be generalised into abstract concepts through, for instance, Nyasha’s case, where her physical refusal of food can be read as a refusal to swallow sexist ideologies and expectations. Conversely, it can also make abstract ideas more tangible by, for example, showing the destructive consequences of colonial education and values that lead to the development of the characters’ various nervous conditions. The notion also serves as a term through which to contextualise and examine various metaphorical and idiomatic usages that enrich the students’ linguistic knowledge and usage of English. Discussion of the novel’s concepts can thus be extended through exploring idiomatic expressions related to food and eating such as “eating/lapping [it] up,” “wolfing [it]
down” and the idea of healthy “nourishing” relationships.
Other terms such as “responsibility,” “duty,” “honour” and “rebellion” are culturally and symbolically loaded similar to the way in which the characters’ nervous conditions are culturally and historically situated. That Tambu refuses to go to her parents’ wedding
(Dangarembga 169), Nyasha speaks up (Dangarembga 115), Maiguru leaves home temporarily (Dangarembga 176) - all these incidents are informed by the characters’ individual experiences as well as sociocultural contexts. Therefore, there is a need to situate and discuss terminology within its relevant contexts. By exploring and contextualising the idea of consumption, students can develop an “awareness of health, life style and consumer issues” (“Curriculum” 6) in conjunction with “the ability to express themselves with variation and complexity” (“English”
1) not only within a postcolonial context, but to also “relate the content to their own experiences and knowledge” (“English” 1) in a meaningful and relevant way.
Nervous Conditions not only problematises the idea of consumption, it also provides a
way to explore possible solutions. The nervous conditions that the characters contract after contact with colonial education and their subsequent relationships to food seem to be resolved through non-Western cures. For instance, female bonding and solidarity has been seen as a way to resist and survive colonial and patriarchal oppression (Uwakweh 82). Mainini’s hunger strike at her daughter’s decision to attend school is reversed by Lucia, Tambu’s aunt, through feeding her meat and milk, usually served to men on special occasions (Creamer 354). This can be seen as performative or symbolic healing through female bonding, where physical nourishment is coupled with a sense of belonging and solidarity to a community. In contrast, Nyasha has no access to the same community. Her refusal to consume food, Western and indigenous ideologies with no substitute or replacement food or ideologies means that she is completely without support mentally and physically. Maiguru’s obedience is a conscious decision to give up much of her autonomy. Nyasha’s disobedience or rebellion is also a conscious decision but to do the opposite: to try and regain her autonomy. Maiguru partially succeeds in wresting some control in the household because her act of leaving can be seen as nourishment of sorts to her sense of self. However, the novel frames Nyasha’s rebellion as ultimately futile because there is no substitute for the ideologies or foods that she refuses to
consume. Through juxtaposing Nyasha and her mother’s experiences, the novel demonstrates that unquestioning or blind consumption is just as detrimental as blind refusal to consume or in other words, blind criticism with no replacement or substitution.
The novel problematises both blind consumption as well as blind refusal to consume, emphasising an acute need for balance. Although difficult and tedious as Tambu’s own mental and physical journey indicates, balance is necessary to negotiate a secure sense of identity and self. The risk of overlooking subtle changes exists, as demonstrated through Tambu’s attitude, but can be combated through developing self-awareness as Tambu does. Therefore, balance requires continuous critical reflection and questioning of contextual values and ideologies as well as knowing when and how to “rebel” to gain and/or maintain autonomy. Since the values and ideologies that warrant critical reflection are embedded within sociohistorical and cultural contexts, postcolonial literature that includes Nervous Conditions has further been seen to encourage intercultural competence. Svensson argues that Michael Byram’s definition of intercultural competence fits into the curriculum for English teaching in four areas: “equality of human rights as the democratic basis for social interaction” (Byram 7 and “Curriculum” 4),
“knowledge of how social groups and social identities function” through media such as fiction (Byram 5 and “Curriculum” 8), allow students to “investigate for themselves the otherness around them” (Byram 3) in relation one’s self and empathise (“Curriculum” 4) and finally, to help students develop a “critical awareness of themselves and their values” (Byram 7) or
“ability to think critically” (“Curriculum” 5). Since some students felt as if culture was an element lacking within the EFL classroom and that they did not read enough (Westerberg Ågren 39-40), postcolonial literature such as Dangarembga’s novel serves to fulfil not only requirements set out by the curriculum in terms of values and language learning, but also to develop intercultural competence, critical thinking skills and promote reading for its own sake.
4 Conclusion
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga has been shown to contextualise and
problematise many different aspects of the concept of consumption and emphasise a need for critical reflection and balance. The novel not only covers discussions in promoting fundamental values laid out in the curriculum for Swedish upper secondary school students, it also provides a platform to deepen linguistic and cultural knowledge in English. This is done through examining and reflecting upon the various issues surrounding consumption such as ideologies and values within different societies that include beauty standards, advertising and gender roles and expectations.
Two key aspects of consumption in relation to the characters’ experiences are problematised in the novel. The first is contact with colonial education that forced colonial values upon the colonised, resulting in Babamukuru’s “bad nerves” and his wife’s brief moment of rebellion. Their imbalanced dynamic highlights a need to critically inspect and discuss traditional gender roles within relationships and examine how various cultural and gender expectations can bridge the gap between the content and themes and students’
experiences. Narrator Tambu too suffers consequences of blindly consuming colonial values through education until she realises the change in her attitude, developing self-awareness in the process and learning from her cousin Nyasha’s eating disorders. Nyasha’s destructive behaviour leads into the second aspect of consumption problematised in the novel, the problem with blind refusal to consume. Uncritical consumption and the total or blind rejection of ideals such as beauty standards and advertising are both shown to have devastating effects. Since ideals are informed and perpetuated by social norms and values, parallels can be drawn between norms and expectations within the postcolonial context of the novel and students’ modern lives in order to make interpretations and reflections more relevant to them.
Furthermore, the novel’s problematisation of consumption can be used to expand students’ English knowledge through idiomatic expressions and linguistic symbolism. Abstract concepts such as postcolonialism and oppression that can be difficult to grasp can be made more tangible. The reverse is also possible where, by examining the idea of consumption, concrete problems like eating disorders can be connected to more abstract ideas like submitting to or rebelling against oppressive ideologies. It also stresses the need to contextualise interpretations and experiences from gendered and cultural perspectives. This is achieved through striking a balance when critically reflecting on or analysing the themes in the novel.
Blind consumption, as demonstrated in the case of Maiguru, is shown to be equally as detrimental to one’s self and well-being as blind refusal to consume anything, as Nyasha chooses. The lack of a substitute or replacement meant that her starvation was both physical and mental, with no access to any community or support networks or actual foods she was able to stomach. The concept of consumption therefore becomes a bridge in which to close the gap between the foreign and the familiar, where food intake and consumption of values are placed within a sociohistorical and cultural context.
The novel also explores possible solutions to the problematic modes of consumption it presents. Nervous Conditions shows that in order to be healthy and thrive, developing and maintaining an awareness for what and how to eat is not enough. Acceptance into a community of sorts for support is as vital as developing and using continuous critical reflection. The latter extends not only to attitudes towards food substances but more importantly to the ideologies and values that are internalised, accepted or rejected. However, these solutions are contextual and not universally applicable. Therefore, more research is needed on the effects of social mobility and capitalism on mental and physical disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, depression and anxiety, as well as the effectiveness of various modern perspectives and treatments for such disorders. This missing research is particularly pertinent in light of changing
understandings and perspectives on medicine, scientific research, psychology, healing and therapy, and would provide an updated connection between the novel’s postcolonial context and modern attitudes.
Lastly, through Nyasha, the novel demonstrates the devastating consequences of multiple oppressive systems at play in the postcolonial context of the novel. The individual experiences of the characters reveal the fraught and difficult task of negotiating autonomy and control under these various systems of oppression. Since they exist and function within a postcolonial context, examining the cultural and sociohistorical environment of postcolonial literature such as Nervous Conditions can promote intercultural competence. In this way, the act of contextualisation helps students to develop critical analysis skills that can then be applied to relevant events and attitudes in their own lives.
Although the novel can be read and analysed through many different lenses, the concept of consumption provides a starting point from which to discuss and examine various themes and problems through gendered and cultured perspectives. Furthermore, as a postcolonial novel it emphasises a need for contextualisation, the ability to exercise critical thinking and strike a balance. Although these skills fulfil requirements within the curriculum for Swedish upper secondary school students studying English, their usefulness and merit extend beyond the four walls of the EFL classroom. The development and application of critical thinking skills to the notion of consumption will hopefully encourage an awareness for cultural contexts and social norms that govern gender stereotypes and expectations and promote the importance and value of maintaining a healthy relationship to both ideologies and food.
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